Participate

Individuals and organisations can apply to participate in the Melbourne Design Week 2026 program by submitting an expression-of-interest.

Expressions-of-interests are now open and close at 12pm on 13 November 2025.

Apply now

KEY DATES

Expressions-of-interest open: 10 October 2025
Expressions of interest close: 12pm 13 November 2025
Expressions-of-interest applicants notified of outcome: From 5 December 2025
Final satellite event assets required: 3 March 2026
Melbourne Design Week: 14-24 May 2026

Melbourne Design Week celebrates design’s transformative potential with the call to action ‘Design the world you want’ – from shaping our homes to influencing the entire planet. In 2026, the festival continues this theme, inviting participants to consider not only how we design the world we want today, but the legacy we leave for tomorrow. We welcome a broad range of proposals that respond to the theme ‘Design the world you want’.

While all ideas are encouraged, we are particularly interested in submissions that explore the legacy of Australian design that explore one or more of the following focus areas:

Living legacy: Submissions that imagine the next chapter of Australian design and invite critical and creative reflection on our future legacy
Australian-made: Projects that spotlight local design, innovation, retail, or manufacturing, including open studios or behind-the-scenes tours
Luminaries: Submissions that highlight influential Australian designers, studios, and movements across time
Design futures: Submissions that explore design as a restorative force: enabling biodiversity, healing communities, replenishing resources, and rebalancing human-nature relations
Circularity: Submissions that foreground the shift taking place from linear, extractive, non-renewable design production to circular, non-extractive, or bio-design
Tech-support: Submissions that explore a new wave of technologies created to extend care, broaden access, and promote fairness

Building on the 2025 program, we also encourage proposals that:

Explore the relationship between design, sport, and fitness
Engage with the hospitality industry through design
Come from creative agencies working across branding, digital, strategy, or spatial design

Tips for a Strong Submission

In developing your application, please include as much information as possible to help us understand your proposal. Strong applications often include:

A clear description of the project and its relevance to MDW themes, including how the proposed program considers a broad public audience
For exhibitions: a list of designers and collaborators, including links to past or proposed work
For talks/events: proposed speakers, topics, and potential venues
Visual references or documentation of previous work (if applicable)

We recommend that you speak to the MDW team prior to submitting a proposal. They can be reached via emailing [email protected]

Why Participate

If you have a story to tell, new work to unveil, an idea to discuss, an issue to debate – Melbourne Design Week is made for you.  Melbourne Design Week is Australia’s leading international public design event, delivered each year by the teams at Creative Victoria and NGV working in close collaboration with a broad network of institutions, media organisations, and industry partners. Our objective is to provide a compelling annual platform, backed by the expertise and reach of the NGV, for participants to engage a broad audience with their work and ideas.

Melbourne Design Week is Australia’s annual opportunity to connect with the design community, be inspired, network and do business
Participants can reach a broad public audience in Melbourne, regional Victoria and online
It is free to present an event during Melbourne Design Week. No registration fees apply
The MDW program receives marketing, media and curatorial support from the NGV
Marketing and media activities reach an extensive audience through a comprehensive digital and social media campaign, eNews, print coverage and targeted media outputs in the lead up to, and during MDW. Now entering its tenth year, Melbourne Design Week 2026 builds on the success of previous years, engaging with diverse industry sectors and an active design community to offer an ever-expanding program of exhibitions, launches, talks, tours, workshops and more